A
new study published in the Archives
of Internal Medicine demonstrates that three-fourths of diabetic
patients receiving medication for cholesterol and blood pressure receive
very little benefit. In fact, the case for “benefit” can
only be justified for those in truly horrid health. For the rest, a
snake pit of adverse side effects is the reality.

“Most
of the total benefit was limited to the first few steps of medication
intensification or to tight control for a limited group of very high-risk
patients,” the authors write. The nearly three-fourths of patients
at average risk, however, received very little benefit. “By accounting
for treatment-related harms, we identified numerous examples in which
intensifying treatment would be contraindicated on the basis of risk-benefit
considerations, and many more instances in which the expected benefits
would be so small that shared patient-clinician decision making would
seem to be the appropriate medical intervention.”

“Given
the large set of factors that moderate the benefit of treatment intensification,
including patients’ underlying cardiovascular disease risk, the
diminishing efficacy of combination therapy and increasing polypharmacy
and adverse effects, we recommend a strategy of tailoring treatments
to individual patients on the basis of their expected benefit of intensifying
treatment,” they conclude. “Current treatment approaches
that encourage uniformly lowering risk factors to common target levels
can be both inefficient and cause unnecessary harm.”

“Like
all models, this one involves numerous assumptions, mysterious concepts,
such as disutility and discounting, and statistical approaches unfamiliar
to many physicians,” writes Andrew L. Avins, M.D., M.P.H., of
Northern California Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, Oakland,
in an accompanying editorial. “And, like all models, there are
assumptions that could be disputed (e.g., specific treatment strategies
and baseline estimates of some parameters). However, the lessons to
be gleaned from this simulation are profound.”

“Most
important, the results starkly challenge some fundamental assertions
regarding the appropriate treatment of patients with diabetes mellitus,”
Dr. Avins writes. “Over the years, practice guidelines have advocated
increasingly tighter control of blood glucose and cardiovascular risk
factors, often relying on logical inference to extend thresholds beyond
the available empirical evidence. The model developed by Timbie et al
suggests that the diminishing returns of more aggressive therapy might
not only be inefficient but potentially harmful.”

“The
principles illustrated by the model of Timbie et al are general and
apply to virtually all preventive interventions,” Dr. Avins concludes.
“One wonders why such examinations are not generally incorporated
into the guideline development process rather than, as in this case,
conducted in response to it.”

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What
you have just read is absolutely stunning and calls for an entire revamp
of the toxic drug overload of Americans under the false pretense of
improving health. This is costing the health care system tens of billions
in fake snake oil treatments of diabetic patients and the whole paradigm
applied to the overall subject of Western medicine is costing more than
a hundred billion per year in blatant public health fraud.

There
is no shortcut to health. If you want better numbers, take the initiative
and make it a priority to get healthy. Drugs don’t produce health
and never will.

Byron
J. Richards, Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist, nationally-renowned
nutrition
expert, and founder of Wellness
Resources is a leader in advocating the value of dietary
supplements as a vital tool to maintain health. He is an outspoken
critic of government and Big Pharma efforts to deny access to natural
health products and has written extensively on the life-shortening and
health-damaging failures of the sickness
industry.